Toaster ovens are an efficient tool for weeknight cooking because they come to temperature faster than regular ovens, are more manageable to clean, and don't heat up your kitchen (a huge plus in the summer months). And yet, many of them just come with a crumb tray, rack, and, if you're lucky, flimsy mini sheet pan. Owning high-quality bakeware specifically designed for your countertop oven will let you do far more than make toast, which is why I tested Chicago Metallic's new toaster-oven specific cookware set. I found that it excelled at cooking small servings of cookies, muffins, and sheet pan dinners—read on for the full review and testing process.

How I Tested

Chicago Metallic is one of the go-to brands for American bakeware, and our test kitchen regularly uses their half-sheet pans. Their 4-piece toaster oven set includes a 9.5 by 6.25-inch baking pan, 9.25 by 6-inch cooling rack, 11 by 7-inch roast/cake pan, and an 11.5 by 7.3-inch, 6-cup muffin pan. The pans are made from heavy-weight aluminum steel and have a nonstick, silicone-based coating. Each of the pans has a nice, heavy bottom and feels solidly built.

The Cookie Test

The 3-ingredient peanut butter cookies came out perfectly on the small sheet tray. I could fit about six small cookies on the tray, and they baked to perfection during the recipe's instructed 10–12 minutes. No one would be able to tell these cookies came from a toaster oven as opposed to a regular oven. The nonstick coating on the sheet tray also worked well—the cookies were easy to remove and the tray easy to clean. They cooked evenly and emerged with a light browning on the bottom.

The Muffin Test

The corn muffins cooked evenly and perfectly in the recipe's allotted time. The pan has a nice heavy bottom, which helped with even cooking. The uncomplicated nature of the final product really redefined what a toaster oven is capable of.

Photo by Chelsea Kyle, Food Styling by Olivia Mack Anderson

The Chicken Test

Most impressively, I cooked what I think were the crispiest chicken thighs of my life in this tiny roasting pan. In one test, I used what is supposed to be the cooling rack as a roasting rack. The chicken thighs, which were simply seasoned with salt and pepper and olive oil, had a crispy skin that shattered in my mouth and dissolved into salty perfection. The vegetables I cooked underneath the chicken had a nice even browning and caramelized flavor. You can fit two chicken thighs comfortably on the pan, along with a solid two servings of vegetables underneath. Again, this pan is small but hefty, and I particularly appreciated the thick metal sides. The nonstick coating also made it super easy to clean the schmaltzy browned bits off of the bottom of the pan.

The Takeaway

Aside from making toaster-oven-baked muffins possible—and leading me to perfect cookies and crispy chicken—these pans made using a toaster oven feel like actual cooking, and not playing with an Easy Bake Oven. The pans have a solid structure and nice coating, and cleanup is mindless since they're small and easy to handle in the sink.

These pans make preparing dinner in a toaster oven not feel like the lazy way out. They aren't vehicles for defrosting frozen meals or melting cheese onto crusty bread—they're the answer to crispy sheet pan dinners. If you have a toaster oven, buy these to make cooking dinner for one or two efficient, without skimping on the quality of your meal. If you have a small kitchen and don't have space to store a full-size roasting pan (let alone a toaster oven), buy this set—the pans work in a regular oven as well, so they really could be your go-to cookware for one.